CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten noted Friday that it would be unprecedented for Vice President Kamala Harris, who represents the incumbent Democratic Party, to win the presidency given how few Americans believe the country is in “the right way”, according to recent polls.
Enten pointed to polls showing that only 28% of Americans currently think America is on the right track, and noted that this is close to the average rating when the party in power loses a major election.
“You’re very much in the danger zone when we’re looking at that right-way, wrong-way number, that’s where the Democrats are right now,” the data reporter declared.
Enten explained the predicament, pointing to both the historical average percentage of Americans who believe the country is on the right track when the party in power loses an election — 25% — and the average percentage in the same category when that party retains power through the election. which he found was 42%.
He told viewers that the current number of 28% is much closer to the rate that is present when the incumbent loses.
Pointing to the numbers on the screen, Enten said, “Look at this. It is only 25%. It looks a lot like that 28%, doesn’t it, who currently think the country is on the right track.”
He continued, “When the party of the White House wins—that is, Kamala Harris’s party, the Democrats—an average of 42% think the country is on the right track. This 25% looks a lot more like this 28%. It looks nothing like this 42%.”
Summarizing the data, he stated: “This to me is a bad sign for the Kamala Harris campaign. The bottom line is that it looks a lot more like a loser than a winner when it comes to getting the country on track.”
CNN host John Berman asked if it was possible for the Democratic Party to win with those numbers, to which Enten cited the average “right-wing” rate during every election since 1980 in which the incumbent won.
His chart found that the lowest rate of Americans who thought the country was on the right track when a president won in the modern era was in 1996, when 39% of voters thought the nation was moving in the right direction.
Other rates were at 41% or higher when incumbents won since 1980, the highest being 47% of the country thought it was on track when former President Ronald Reagan won re-election in a landslide in 1984.
“There is no historical precedent for the White House party to win another term in the White House when only 28% of the country thinks we’re on the right track,” he said, adding, “John, simply put, will to be historically unprecedented.”
At Berman’s prompting, Enten held out a glimmer of hope for Democrats that the recent midterm elections could represent a new era for the country, pointing to numbers that reveal the Democratic Party had a successful midterm election in 2022 even though only 26% thought the country was on the right track at the time.
“Maybe we’ve entered a new political environment where Donald Trump is so unpopular that these historical norms, these historical measures that we look at no longer mean what we think,” he said.
“I’ll tell you this much, Kamala Harris I better hope so, because otherwise this right, wrong direction situation isn’t going to work in their favor.”
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